Christmas Lights

The boys and I drove around to check out Christmas lights after dropping a friend of Justinbustin's after a playdate. We hit the mother lode and found this house:


There's a cute little seal balancing a ball on his nose who is in the lower left hand corner of the picture, a waterfall coming off the house, an ice skating santa, Rudolph, and way too much more to list. The lights on the trees light up in sync with the music on a radio station they have. We had SO much fun!

Santa Funnies

Sara's recent post about Santa got me thinking about some cute Santa things Shawners said recently. When he saw our favorite Santa at the mall, "That's not the real Santa. He's not fat enough." And when he saw another Santa in a preview for a movie, "He's not Santa. His beard isn't long enough."

Six Degrees of Separation... or Three

It continuosly amazes me what a small world we live in which the blog world continues to make even smaller. When Laura got here we found out her aunt and uncle go to my church and her nephew is in Justinbustin's Sunday School class. How small does that get?! Another example, last week when we took off from the airport we ran into a girl who was also heading to Disneyland and discovered she also teaches at a school just down the road from me. Guess who was sitting across from me in tutoring lab tonight? Yup. It was her. It just makes me think about the possibility of knowing a close friend I haven't yet met through the person sitting directly across from me. I love this small world God's created and I've always looked forward to meeting as many people in my small circle as I can - things like this excite me even more.

Blogging Moves On

How cute is this? Justinbustin asked me how to start a blog yesterday. We started one for him this morning called "monkeybunky" (because it's a nickname of mine for him, and I didn't want to bother trying the fifty other more common names he was coming up with). He's been working all morning on a Star Wars post, complete with battle scenes acted out by Lego star wars figures he's built (pictures to be uploaded when Mommy has time). Check it out at monkeybunky . blogspot . com . Shawner's to be coming soon!

Oh, and as for my previous post Brandon totally forgot about our anniversary as well until I texted him "Happy Anniversary by the way! I love you." from class. I'll pass along the sweet credit any way Court : ) . And the comments about him knowing what I like. Thanks for the sweet anniversary wishes all!

Happy Anniversary to...

Us! We've been married 7 years today. I totally forgot until I got to class tonight and looked at my calendar to write down the homework assignments and saw the "Our Anniversary <3". Ha. Both of us completely forgot, and I'm not even sure Brando's remembered yet as he's working tonight! I guess this is what happens after 7 years. Hehe.

He came home with chocolate, my favorite: Rochers, Raspberry Lindt, and Orange Lindt, a sweet card, and my favorite kind of candle: vanilla in a jar (that I can just burn and burn and burn). Sooo sweet! I felt bad for not getting him anything and was very glad he did get me something ; ) !

Girl Time

Oh my gosh, Laura and I had soooo much fun on Sunday when we got together! We got in from Disneyland on Friday, and Laura had been here visiting her family the whole week. We had made plans to get together Sunday to go ice skating, and she called Saturday night to see if I wanted to go to Broken Spoke and experience down home Texas country with her. However, it was Shawn's birthday, and on top of that I was exhausted from the trip. I was sooooo sad I had to turn her down, especially since I didn't think we would have any time for girlie time the next day.

Turns out her family goes to my church so we met up after church and ate at Austin's brand new BJ's Brewery in honor of my cuz, who Laura spent time with in San Diego last year after I hooked the two of them up when I heard Laura was going to be in SD. BJ's has my cousin's absolute favorite dessert, the pazookie. We sacrilegiously didn't have a pazookie because we were way too full from the Turkey Cobb sandwich and Blackened Chicken pizza we shared. Shawn got one for his birthday with a candle in it and finished nearly the entire thing himself, so we figured that was good enough.

Afterwards we went ice skating on top of Whole Foods, which has now become a yearly family tradition for us. It was SO fun to have Laura there this year!! It was 40 degrees outside and we were all bundled up. Shawners learned to ice skate! Previously he used the two blade ice skates that fit over his shoes. This time he used the one blade ice skates with no shoes and learned to skate all by himself! It was absolutely the cutest thing ever! It's an amazing freeing feeling ice skating on top of a building in the middle of downtown Austin.

Next we warmed up with hot chocolate and toured the Whole Foods headquarters. We got a yummy fruit tarte, which we took to Mt. Bonnell and ate after we climbed to the top to see the gorgeous view and take a ton of fun pictures. Pictures, which are on Laura's camera, because I completely forgot mine!! Bummer. We ended up getting some really cute ones on hers, thanks to Brando. It was so neat to see the town I live in through the eyes of someone who loves Austin but doesn't get to visit that often, and is so appreciative of all the beauty we have here.

After Mt. Bonnell Laura and I dropped the kids and Brando off at home so we could have a girlie night. We headed to the famous Salt Lick first (oh soooo yummy bbq) out in the middle of nowhere and got lost on the way. Later Laura googled a place to listen to music on Sunday night and found The Continental Club. We headed there, a little wary of what we would find. Turns out it was the place to be on Sunday night. We heard the Heybales and watched country dancing with a very eclectic group of people - cowboys, guys with dreds, lots of guys in beanies and their girlfriends, greasers. Very fun people watching! Laura danced three or four dances with a guy who took some really neat pictures for us. I can't wait to see them! We left after midnight and had such a good conversation talking til 1:30am sitting in her aunt and uncle's driveway before we finally went our separate ways.

I can't believe how much we DID and how much fun we had doing it in such a short amount of time! I continue to be amazed at the world the blog world opens up. This is the first time I've met Laura in person, yet from the second I saw her I felt like we had known each other for years. Like a friend you haven't seen for a long time but could instantly catch up where we left of. As she put it so eloquently to a guy who was in disbelief that we had met through a blog, "We're not strangers. We've known each other for two years." I feel exactly the same way.

Headed Home

We are at the airport where I've bought a connection in order to get a hold of Laura's phone number which I meant to put in my cell phone before we left on our trip. She is in Austin right now and we are planning to meet up on Sunday, and were possibly going to meet tomorrow. I just got off the phone with her and am SO EXCITED!! Her cousins go to our church (surprise, surprise - although our church is so big and well known if somebody doesn't go there they at least know about it) and we're going to meet up for service and then go and have fun afterwards!

So, our trip. Wow. Crazy. Fun. Exciting. Insane. Awesome. Tiggerific. Way. too. much. fun. There are so many pictures I'm going to have to create a whole (online because I'm way too lazy to do it the other way) scrapbook just for them! The kids and I flew in to LA Saturday and all nineteen of us had dinner at Mimi's Cafe at 10:30pm at night. The next day we check out my Mom's old stomping grounds - where she grew up in Garden Grove, where her first job was, where my Dad and her met, where her Mom and Dad are buried. That was really special to experience a small part of her childhood and time before she became known as Mom with her.

My sister had planned a dinner at Pirate's Dinner Adventure on Sunday for Shawner's birthday. It was similar to Medieval Times, only with pirates. Who sang. And talked about being drunk. A lot. And called a lot of volunteers. Including me. Who forgot to rig the Christmas stocking when I was supposed to. Oops. Let's move on shall we. The kids loved it and we re-experienced childhood saying "Aye, matey! Arrr!" with red snowflaked pirate bands around our heads.

Our first day at Disneyland was SO MUCH FUN!! We hit Frontierland first with Pirates of the Carribbean arrr matey, Indiana Jones, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the pirate show and ship, and Jungle Cruise. From there we conquered Disneyland land by land, well that was the idea any way. By the end of the trip we had gone on It's a Small World (only they sang jingle bells and the mermaids sang Jingle Shells for Christmas), Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan, the teacups, Astro Blasters, Star Tours, Autotopia, Tomorrowland, the rocket ships, Space Mountain, the Matterhorn, Splash Mountain, the Haunted Mansion and who knows what else.

Yay! Two photos I found in my email for you:

We're really concentrating. Must. shoot. the. robots.

Shawners is so cute in here - you can barely see his eyes (maybe he was ducking)!!

My cousin on my Dad's side joined us for the first two days and after she left on Tuesday, my aunt on my Mom's side joined us for dinner at the restaurant in Disney where my Mom's Dad worked 50 years ago on Main Street, the Plaza Inn.

Over in California Adventure Land we checked out California Soaring where we soared over all the beautiful spots in California, smelling the orange trees and feeling the ocean breeze. We rode the giant orange peel swing, checked out the 3D Bug's Life show where an acid bug sprayed us with water, spiders came down from the ceiling, and maggots crawled on our seats underneath our butts (ew). We also checked out the Muppets 3D show, the Honey I Shrunk the Audience 3D show, and the robot show. The 3D shows are so definitely worth it. They are amazingly real to life! I reached out my hand to touch what was in front of me so many times I couldn't begin to count. Hollywood House of Terror was absolutely terrifying. It was set in the movie setting of the same name and it takes you up in a maintenance elevator shaft. You wave goodbye to yourself in a mirror as you watch yourself disappear and then watch your dissappearing figure get electrocuted. Then you go up to another level where you watch the original four people in the Hollywood Tower Hotel disappear and get electrocuted. Next you enter the Twilight Zone right before you get dropped. Twice. Then you go up for a view of all of California Adventure land and get dropped again. Go back up to another level for another view and get dropped again. Then, for good measure, once more. By the time it was over I was curled up in my sister-in-law's lap and losing my voice from screaming. California Adventure Land was less Disneyland and more theme park like, but it was amazing just the same because it was all Disney and Disney technology, all in a beautiful California setting.

Shawner's birthday is tomorrow and since we won't be around family tomorrow we celebrated all week. We started with the pirate dinner on Sunday and a birthday song there, wearing a birthday pin on Monday at Disneyland where every other Disneyland employee told Shawners happy birthday, and then again on Wednesday where he got told Happy Birthday again and had another birthday lunch in California Adventureland at the winery. His loot included a bag of goodies: pirate treasure, swords, noisemakers, twirlies, from Grandma on Sunday, a Build-A-Cheetah from mommy and daddy, complete with Skechers, skateboard, and army shorts, a Mickey mouse with an I Heart You t-shirt from his 16 yr old cousin, Bre, and a Perfect Petzz sleeping Border Collie from Grandma and Grandpa, and let's not forget the trip to Disneyland. Pretty sure he made out like a bandit.

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Madonna Inn, where my Dad ended up getting us all hotel rooms to stay the night. This place is insane gaudy in mostly pink and red with each room being completely different from each other - some of the more fun ones with rock waterfall showers, and so much fun if you don't mind a little outdated richness. Our room was Morning Star. My good childhood friend came over from her house a few minutes away and we stayed up until 11:30am reminiscing and chatting like the closest of friends who haven't seen each other in a long time do. We drove to Santa Cruz this morning and then headed straight to the airport.

There are so many special memories from this trip that will come to me in the next few weeks as any of the family drama memories start to fade and the special memories get permanently implanted in my brain forever, to wistfully remember and wish for the day we get to do it all again.

Knocked Out

So I read Laura's comment a little too late about putting on the tunes and knocking out the paperwork but I DID knock out the paperwork yesterday. Yay!

Oh I just have to mention an ADORABLE thing Shawners said this morning: I wish God would make the sun go down and then go up so that we could get on the plane and go to California right now.

Buggers

We are off to Disneyland on Saturday and the house seems like it is opening up and devouring me with all the clutter it holds. Starting the month I was working things spun out of control from barely hovering beforehand, and now it has completely enveloped me in it's clutter glory. There is a corner in my living room that has four boxes of paper (kids' school stuff, contract papers from selling our rental house, resume copies and work applications) sucking part of my brain into a black hole every time I think of it. Then there's the laundry, which makes me think of kicking back and watching girly guilty pleasure tv shows (the Bachelor, Gossip Girl, ANTM), so that's not such a bad thing even though it's taking over my dining room. Next there's the boys' schoolwork which has overtaken my dining room table with a sea of papers, pencils, erasers, and cute little kid creations. Let's not even talk about packing. I'm creating our packing list and my Kel girl came over to drop some of her fun clothing and jewelry off, which I feel better about because sharing wardrobes with her makes me feel like I just went shopping! Last but not least, Justin came down with a fever yesterday and wasn't able to go to school. On top of that we are all fighting something - be it allergies or virus, I don't know. Oh, and let's not forget, some kid in their school came down with chicken pox last week. My prayers are for a safe, healthy, happy, fun time before, during, and after our trip full of creating special memories.

So, ending on a super happy note, Shawners can READ!! And ride a two wheeler!! Last Thursday he read his first book, and Sunday he took his first two wheeler ride and rode for at least half an hour before his first fall which wasn't much of a fall any way. I'm SOOO proud of him.

Gah

So we just found out though we fly out Saturday, Brando can't come out until Tuesday so he will miss two days of Disneyland : ( . My Mom is willing to keep us out there until the following Sunday to make his trip a little longer than having to turn right back around and come back Friday, but at this point will cost an arm and a leg unless we fly out Monday, which Brando can't do. Pout. I figure we'll save it for another time when Brando is able to stay out longer. It sucks though that we will be back here and everybody (prob. incl. my sis) will be off celebrating the Tday weekend with family, except for... us.

Ummm the prelude to this vent would be WE ARE GOING TO DISNEYLAND!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! My parents are fulfilling a long awaited dream of taking ALL of the family and we're doing it over Thanksgiving week. All the cousins, all (well, almost) the siblings, WHEEEEEE!!!! Talk about CRAZY, UNFILTERED, BEST TIME IN THE WORLD BECAUSE IT'S FAMILY NO MATTER THE DRAMA time!!! I'm really excited that even though Brando won't be there for the first few days, I've been enjoying my newly found freedom while he's been at work at night (now I know a little bit of what it's like to be you, Alyssa, with your oh so hard working of five jobs husband) and hopefully a little bit of that will spill over into this trip. Heck, Allison did it, Girl does it, I'm golden. I hope. teehee Yay for Disneyland!!